And, at the same time, Harlen Maguire was portrayed in the press as Rance’s bodyguard, who bravely did his best to ward off a murderous brigand, suffering injuries in the process. Which was how Maguire managed to walk away from the carnage, or rather was gurneyed away, spirited like a hero to the Stillwater hospital for emergency care of his glass-ravaged face.
Rather crude suspect sketches of my father and me hit the papers, though until subsequent events put Michael O’Sullivan, John Looney, Connor Looney, and Harlen Maguire back in the papers (and on the radio and in the newsreels), neither Papa’s name nor mine was associated with the story headlined “ARMED ROBBERS SOUGHT—Getaway Driver a Young Boy.”
At the time, of course, my father and I had other, more pressing concerns—chiefly, survival. Fortunately for us, other families—perhaps most families—in those hard times were scratching out a modest living and knew what it was to struggle just to exist. None of what has been written about my father and me has covered—no amount of diligent research has uncovered—the identity of the people who helped us, in the aftermath of the Grand Hotel shoot-out.
They are gone now, and their deeds—whether interpreted negatively or positively—cannot harm these good Samaritans. I would ask that you think of them as representative of a breed of American who lives no longer—hearty pioneers who managed to wrest a livelihood of sorts out of hardscrabble land.
Farming in the Great Plains never really made a recovery after the collapse of farm prices in 1920 and ’21. Though even worse adversity lay ahead—droughts and dust storms would soon place Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma in the middle of the so-called Dust Bowl—farmer families were already barely scratching out a living, after the Depression drove prices into the cellar.
Thus the landscape into which I drove my wounded father was topsoil rich and money poor, a desolate paradise that promised us, if not salvation, respite from the road.
Frightened though he was, Michael could handle the situation as long as his father was conscious, giving him directions—turn here, stay at the speed limit, take a left. Papa had managed to get the bleeding stopped with a piece of cloth torn from his own shirt, wouldn’t even let the boy stop to help wrap the makeshift bandage around himself.
That may have been what finally taxed his father’s considerable stamina and willpower, sending this strong weakened man into unconsciousness.
And then panic rose in the boy like water overtaking a sinking ship. Instinctively, he pulled off the main road, knowing he had to find a residence, a farm maybe, to seek help for his father. The Ford did well on the rutted dirt road, but Michael had to slow, not wanting the jolts to cause his father pain, even in his unconscious state.
Up ahead were some rickety buildings—a farmhouse, a barn, shack-like structures constructed of paint-peeling planks—that might normally have put the boy off. Right now, he was happy to see any sign of civilization, even if this spread was more like the hillbilly houses he’d seen in moving pictures and funny papers than the nice farms around Rock Island.
A pair of old people—in their fifties, maybe—were working in a field that looked pretty rough; warmer here, spring easing out winter, already. The couple was moving along slowly, kneeling at tilled soil, the man digging, the woman planting; their clothes were old and worn-out looking, the man in overalls and a ragged shirt and raggedy hat, the woman in a calico dress—both she and the dress had probably been pretty once, before the boy was born.
Michael pulled up at the edge of the field, where the couple worked, the boy thrilled to see any human being, particularly any that weren’t shooting at him and his father. He ran between tilled rows, desperately waving his arms, and the couple glanced at each other, knowing help was needed, ready to give it.
What followed was a frenzied blur to the boy—a heated knife digging at his delirious father’s shoulder, a bloody bullet dropping into a tin cup like a coin in the offering plate at church, his father shivering with fever on a makeshift cot in the front room of the shack-like house.
“Night sweats,” the farmer said. His name was Bill; he had kind blue eyes, a grooved face, and mostly white hair. “It’s good he sweats out the poison in him…but tend him, son. Stay with your father.”
Michael didn’t have to be told that. His father had tended to him, over these long weeks, and now he removed his father’s shirt, buttoning cuffs that were frayed and stained from their travels. He folded his father’s tie, placing it over the end of the cot, ritualistically, in the way he’d seen his father do, so many times.
The farmer and his wife—her name was Virginia, and she had blue eyes, too, in a face as pleasant as it was weathered, and dark-blonde graying hair—stayed in the room, but out of the way, mostly over by the kitchen part. They wore concern in their features that seemed unusual to Michael, considering he and his father were strangers. They didn’t have Catholic icons in their house, so they weren’t of the faith of his family; but Michael knew these were Christians, because they did Christian things… unlike some people who said they believed in Jesus.
Their name was Baum, but he thought at first they said “Bomb,” which struck him as a funny kind of name. Later his father corrected him, saying their name was like Balm in the Bible—”The Balm of Gilead,” Papa said.
By the next night, his father was awake, but groggy, still not really communicating very well. Michael sat beside him and fed him soup with a spoon that was a little too small for the job; he would have to wipe Papa’s mouth with a frayed napkin Mrs. Bomb had provided. It was as if Papa were the child, and Michael the father, and the change felt good, made the boy feel older, that he was somehow paying his Papa back for all the wonderful things his father had done for him.
When the Bombs had gone off to their own bedroom, Michael settled on the threadbare sofa opposite his father’s cot—Papa was still feverish, but not as bad, not near as bad—and the boy was settling his head on a pillow Mrs. Bomb had given him, when he noticed the gun in the holster under his father’s jacket, on a chair where Mr. Bomb had draped it.
Papa was asleep, and so was the farm couple. The boy crept off the sofa, carefully removed the gun from the holster, and he stood and looked down at the weapon, huge in his small hand—rough and cold, not smooth and warm, like you’d imagine, from Tom Mix and the Lone Ranger.
But the longer he held it, the more natural it felt—he stood at the cracked mirror of a dresser off to one side of the room and pretended to be Tom Mix, drawing his gun at himself—looking fierce, a bad, bad man…
Then he pretended he was the Lone Ranger, and at some point, in his imaginings, he was his father…
O’Sullivan was not exactly sure how many days had passed. Three at least; probably no more than five. Unshaven, topcoat over his tieless white shirt, he sat in an old wicker chair on the porch of the timeworn farmhouse, feeling not bad, a tin cup of coffee steaming, cradled nicely in his hands. In the world around him, green was overtaking brown, and snow was nowhere. When had spring crept up on them? It had been winter, an eye blink ago.
Yet somehow it was not a surprise. They had been on the road together, he and Michael, forever—and yet there was no way to put enough time and space between them and the taking of Annie and Peter to give any solace, to make it seem anything but terrible and fresh in his memory. Out in the field—what a hard life these people had, but it was a life, wasn’t it, better than their own—Bill was allowing Michael to help in the planting, the boy doing the digging with energy and enthusiasm, while the warmly amused farmer followed along, dropping seeds.
Mrs. Baum, a grizzled goddess in a frayed checkered dress, peeling potatoes, was watching the boy, too. Then she glanced toward the ramshackle barn, where the maroon Ford could be glimpsed, since the door was half off its hinges.
“’spect you’ll be leavin’, soon,” she said.
O’Sullivan knew what she meant.
“We’ve enjoyed our visit,” he said. “I should be strong enough, by tomorrow…Don’t w
ant to cause you any trouble.”
“No trouble a’tall.”
“Thank you for not asking questions.”
“Our own business is enough to keep us occupied.”
“But you took us in—strangers. Bullet holes in our car…bullet in me.”
A smile grooved her face, a thousand smile lines joining it. “This is Oklahoma, mister. We don’t like the banks much.”
O’Sullivan didn’t correct her false assumption.
“You know,” she said, “that boy Choctaw’s from around these parts.”
“Pardon?”
“That Floyd fella.”
Now O’Sullivan knew: Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd.
“He’s a wild one,” she continued, “but he helps folks out. Law says we oughta give him up—so far nobody has. Sayin’ is around these parts, sometimes a person’s got to sift the law.”
O’Sullivan said nothing.
Then Mrs. Baum, her smile almost glowing, said, “Boy of yours—he’s a good worker.”
Nodding, O’Sullivan felt a smile of his own blossom—he was enjoying his son’s antics out in the field. He asked the woman, “Any children of your own?”
“No…Bill and me hooked up a little late in life, for that. This is a family farm, though, Bill’s people—once was right somethin’ to see. No, no children…Can’t have everything.”
These people had next to nothing, O’Sullivan thought; and yet they were grateful for their lot in life…
Almost too casually, the woman said, “Dotes on you, you know.”
“Pardon?”
She turned her smile on the confused O’Sullivan. “Boy of yours! Worships the ground you walk on…Don’t you see it?”
Frankly, he didn’t, and just shrugged by way of response; but the next moment, his eyes caught Michael’s, the boy looking up from his work, joy in his face, and he threw a casual wave at his father, before returning to his digging.
O’Sullivan did not understand the rush of emotion. It came up somewhere deep inside of him, rolling with an awful warmth up his chest into his face and moisture welled behind his eyes, overtaking him. He excused himself and went back into the house.
He did not want these kind people to see him weep, nor did he want his son to witness that shameful action.
Michael awoke on the sofa, startled out of sleep by a dreadful dream.
In the dream—the nightmare—he’d been in the Looney mansion, and he and his father were kneeling at the coffin again, like at the wake. But when Michael peeked inside the box, his father was inside—with pennies on his eyes! And when Michael looked to his side, where a moment before Papa had been kneeling, too—it was Mr. Looney now, smiling in that grandfatherly way, his arm around him. Then the boy ran away and Mr. Looney started to chase him; at some point Mr. Looney turned into Connor Looney and then Michael ran into a room and it was the bathroom of their own house, white tile and red blood and dead Peter and dead Mama and he made himself wake up.
He stumbled over in his pajamas to where his father sat at a table, going over books and records in the light of a kerosene lamp. Papa was in his T-shirt and suspenders and trousers, his bandaged arm showing, blood dried there, a reddish brown.
Papa looked like he was having trouble—it reminded the boy of himself, trying to do his schoolwork, really struggling.
When Michael approached, Papa looked up—the boy had been expecting reproval, for not being asleep, but instead his father’s expression was warm, the man obviously pleased to see him.
That really helped, after the bad dream.
“Hello,” Papa said. “What are you doing up? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Nightmare.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
The boy shook his head.
His father pulled out the chair next to him at the table. “Come. Sit with me…if you want.”
Michael sat. The papers his father was going over were figures, numbers in columns and rows.
“Math, huh?” the boy said, making a face.
Papa smiled at him. “Yeah—I always hated that subject, in school.”
Michael had never thought about his father ever having been a kid at all—let alone in school. This was a minor revelation… and sudden common ground.
“Me, too,” Michael said, and grinned.
Then his father stopped and he had a funny look—almost like he felt guilty about something. “I…I guess I never took time to find that out, son. What, uh, subjects did you like?”
That came out of left field! The boy thought for a few moments, then said, “Bible history, I guess.”
This seemed to really surprise Papa. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the stories. I always liked stories.”
Papa smiled again, then asked, “You like stories with happy endings?”
“Sure…but not all good stories have happy endings. The ones in the Bible have really bad endings, sometimes, sad endings.”
O’Sullivan thought about that, then he nodded. “But maybe they teach us something…the sad-ending ones.”
That seemed reasonable to Michael. “Yeah…Pop?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t get mad.”
“I won’t.”
“…Did you like Peter better than me?”
His father’s expression was blank; but something in the man’s eyes made Michael wish he hadn’t asked the question.
“Oh Michael, no,” he said, and he touched the boy’s arm. “I loved you both the same.”
“But you couldn’t have.”
“…Why?”
“Because if you loved us the same, you wouldn’t treat us different.”
His father blinked. “Did I do that, son?”
“…Well. Yes. Sure.”
Papa sighed, then he said, quietly, “I didn’t love you the same…I loved you equally. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“I may have seemed to love Peter more, because…”
“Because he was the baby?”
Papa swallowed. “Yes. Because he was the baby, and…he was just a sweet boy. You know? Sweet.”
“He never hit you with a snowball.”
Though his eyes remained sad, Papa laughed, once. “No, he didn’t. But he did have a sweetness about him that…you and I don’t have, son.”
“We don’t?”
“You were more like me. Peter was more like Mom.”
The boy thought about that.
Then his father said, “I didn’t mean to treat you different.”
This was getting hard on both of them, so Michael just shrugged and said, “Okay. It’s okay…’Night, Papa.”
And, on impulse, he hugged his father around the neck, being careful not to hurt the man’s sore arm. Papa hugged back, not being so careful.
After his son began softly snoring on the couch, O’Sullivan was able to get his mind back on the task before him. Something Rance had said—or maybe it was something about the accountant’s attitude—made O’Sullivan think an answer of sorts might be waiting to be found in these figures.
So he sorted through the documents, setting some aside, looking at others, overwhelmed, out of his element. Finally a buff-colored file almost seemed to appear in his hands…
…CONNOR LOONEY, it was boldly marked.
Surprised, interested, he began to look carefully through it—at letters, accounts, bills of lading, receipts, dockets, and more. He pushed the other books and ledgers and files aside and concentrated on this one.
And when the sun came up, O’Sullivan—fully dressed, ready to ride, .45 under his arm, new information in his brain—gently shook Michael awake, saying, “Up up up.”
The bleary-eyed boy leaned on an elbow and asked, “Where’s the fire?”
“Time to go. We don’t want to wear out our welcome.”
Michael gave him no argument, though the boy was clearly conflicted about leaving behind his new “family,” and yet ob
viously anxious to get back out on the road with his father.
As they rolled out of the barn in the Ford, O’Sullivan waved at the farm couple, who waved back. He leaned out the window, and said, “We left a little thank you,” and pointed to the barn. Then the car rolled out onto, and down, the dirt road.
The Baums were already heading into the barn, and O’Sullivan smiled at his son, who smiled back. The couple would soon find out it sometimes paid to be hospitable: the O’Sullivan “gang” had left them stacks and stacks of money packets on a bale of hay…hundreds of thousands of dollars in Capone money. Let Choctaw top that.
They were on a paved highway when he told the boy they were heading back to the Tri-Cities.
“Why are we going back?” Michael asked.
“Something doesn’t add up, son,” he said, nodding toward the back, where the ledger books and files were now stowed in the compartment under the seat. “Men lie, but numbers don’t. Facts and figures…It’s always about money.”
“You mean, math?” the boy asked.
“Math,” his father said.
SIXTEEN
John Looney had a ranch in Chama, New Mexico, an adobe fortress where he had gone from time to time, to rest or to hide out from his enemies. After the Market Square riot, when Looney was fined by the court for incitement and his newspaper (temporarily) shut down, the patriarch went to the ranch to recover from injuries delivered by local cops who were in the pocket of a Looney rival. Another time Looney holed up at the ranch recovering from wounds received in a duel. Many true-crime historians have wondered why Looney stayed around the Tri-Cities when the trouble with Mike O’Sullivan started. Some contend that he did flee, briefly at least, to his New Mexico “home away from home,” and one account has federal agents arresting him there.
Though I have no direct proof other than my recollection, I believe my father had heard from a friend on Looney’s payroll that the old man was packing up for another of these New Mexico “vacations.” This was in part why we rushed from Oklahoma back to Illinois, while Papa was still weak from his injury.
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